DESCRIPTION

Invocation

From a shell:

$ trepan.pl [trepan-opts] [--] perl-program [perl-program-opts]

Or for those who prefer the traditional Perlish way:

$ perl -d:Trepan perl-program [perl-program-opts]

The problem with the above "perlish" approach is that you get the default trepan options. If you want to set any of these, you'll have to set them either with a debugger command, possibly via startup script, e.g. ~/.treplrc or via environment variable TREPANPL_OPTS.

To see the environement variables, run trepan.pl with the --verbose option or run eval $ENV{TREPANPL_OPTS} inside of the debugger.

Calling the debugger from inside your Perl program using Joshua ben Jore's Enbugger:

# This needs to be done once and could even be in some sort of
# conditional code
require Enbugger; Enbugger->load_debugger( 'trepan' );
# Alternatively, to unconditionally load Enbugger and trepan:
use Enbugger 'trepan';
# work, work, work...
# Oops! there was an error! Enable the debugger now!
Enbugger->stop; # or Enbugger->stop if ...

Or if you just want POSIX-shell-like set -x line tracing:

$ trepan.pl -x -- perl-program [perl-program-opts]

Inside the debugger tracing is turned on using the command set trace print. There is extensive help from the help command.

Making the program stop at certain points

A breakpoint is a way to have the program stop at a pre-determined location. A breakpoint can be perminant or one-time. A one-time breakpoint is removed as soon as it is hit. In a sense, stepping is like setting one-time breakpoints. Breakpoints can also be disabled which allows you to temporarily ignore stopping at that breakpoint while it is disabled. Finally one can control conditions under which a breakpoint is enacted upon.

Another way to force a stop is to watch to see if the value of an expression changes. Often that expression is simply examinging a variable's value.

Specifying and examining files

Commands involving running the program

The commands in the section involve controlling execution of the program, either by kinds of stepping (step into, step over, step out) restarting or termintating the program altogether. However setting breakpoints is in "Making the program stop at certain points".

Examining the call stack

The commands in this section show the call stack and let set a reference for the default call stack which other commands like list or break use as a position when one is not specified.

The most recent call stack entry is 0. Except for the relative motion commands up and down, you can refer to the oldest or top-level stack entry with -1 and negative numbers refer to the stack from the other end.

Beware that in contrast to debuggers in other programming languages, Perl really doesn't have an easy way for one to evaluate statements and expressions other than at the most recent call stack. There are ways to see lexical variables my and our, however localized variables which can hide global variables and other lexicals variables can be problematic.

Syntax of Debugger Commands

BUGS/CAVEATS

Because this should be useful in all sorts of environments such as back to perl 5.008, we often can not make use of newer Perlisms nor can we require by default all of the modules, say for data printing, stack inspection, or interactive terminal handling. That said, if you have a newer Perl or the recommended modules or install plugins, you'll get more.

Although modular, this program is even larger than perl5db and so it loads a little slower. I think part of the slowness is the fact that there are over 70 or so (smallish) files (rather than one nearly 10K file) and because relative linking via rlib is used to glue them together.

A Perl debugger that uses HTML and javascript to implement the GUI. The front end talks via a REST service.

COPYRIGHT

Copyright (C) 2011, 2012, 2014 Rocky Bernstein <rocky@cpan.org>

This program is distributed WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY, including but not limited to the implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

The program is free software. You may distribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation (either version 2 or any later version) and the Perl Artistic License as published by O'Reilly Media, Inc. Please open the files named gpl-2.0.txt and Artistic for a copy of these licenses.